ERNEST DOWSON

Dregs

1899

"I really do think, Mr. Carnelian, that we should at least try them raw, don't you?"

Mrs. Amelia Underwood, with the flat of her left hand, stroked thick auburn hair back over her ear and, with her right hand, arranged her tattered skirts about her ankles. The gesture was almost petulant; the glint in her grey eye was possibly wolfish. There was, if nothing else, something over-controlled in the manner in which she perched primly upon her block of virgin limestone and watched Jherek Carnelian as he crouched, elbows and knees pressed in the sand of a Palaeozoic beach, and sweated in the heat of the huge Silurian (or possibly Devonian) sun.

Perhaps for the thousandth time he was trying to strike two of his power-rings together to make a spark to light the heap of half-dried ferns he had, in a mood of ebullience long since dissipated, arranged several hours before.

"But you told me," he murmured, "that you could not bear to consider … There! Was that a spark? Or just a glint?"

"A glint," she said, "I think."

"We must not despair, Mrs. Underwood." His optimism was uncharacteristically strained. Again he struck ring against ring.

Around him were scattered the worn and broken fragments of fronds which he had earlier tried to rub together at her suggestion. As power-ring clacked on power-ring, Mrs. Underwood winced. In the silence of this Silurian (if it was Silurian) afternoon the sound had an effect upon her nerves she would not previously have credited; she had never seen herself as one of those over-sensitive women who populated the novels of Marie Corelli. She had always considered herself robust, singularly healthy. She sighed. Doubtless the boredom contributed something to her state of mind.

Jherek echoed her sigh. "There's probably a knack to it," he admitted. "Where are the trilobites?" He stared absently around him at the ground.

"Most of them have crawled back into the sea, I think," she told him coldly. "There are two brachiopods on your coat." She pointed.

"Aha!" Almost affectionately he plucked the molluscoidea from the dirty black cloth of his frock-coat. Doubtfully, he peered into the shells.

Mrs. Underwood licked her lips. "Give them to me," she commanded. She produced a hat-pin.

His head bowed, Pilate confronting the Pharisees, he complied.

"After all," she told him as she poised the pin, "we are only missing garlic and butter and we should have a meal fit for a French gourmet." The utterance seemed to depress her. She hesitated.

"Mrs. Underwood?"

"Should we say grace, I wonder?" She frowned. "It might help. I think it's the colour…"

"Too beautiful," he said eagerly. "I follow you. Who could destroy such loveliness?"

"That greenish, purplish hue pleases you?"

"Not you?"

"Not in food, Mr. Carnelian."

"Then in what?"

"Oh…" Vaguely. "In — no, not even in a picture. It brings to mind the excesses of the Pre-Raphaelites. A morbid colour."

"Ah."

"It might explain your affinities…" She abandoned the subject. "If I could conquer…"

"A yellow one?" He tried to tempt her with a soft-shelled creature he had just discovered in his back pocket. It clung to his finger; there was the sensation of a kiss.

She dropped molluscs and hat-pin, covered her face with her hands and began to weep.

"Mrs. Underwood!" He was at a loss. He stirred the pile of fronds with his foot. "Perhaps if I were to use a ring as a prism and direct the rays of the sun through it we could…"

There came a loud squeak and he wondered at first if one of the creatures were protesting. Another squeak, from behind him. Mrs. Underwood removed her fingers to expose red eyes which now widened in surprise.

"Hi! I say — Hi, there!"

Jherek turned. Tramping through the shallows, apparently oblivious of the water, came a man dressed in a seaman's jersey, a tweed Norfolk jacket, plus-fours, heavy woollen stockings, stout brogues. In one hand he clutched a stick of a peculiarly twisted crystalline nature. Otherwise he appeared to be a contemporary of Mrs. Underwood's. He was smiling. "I say, do you speak English of any kind?" He was bronzed. He had a full moustache and signs of a newly sprouting beard. He beamed at them. He came to a stop, resting his knuckles on his hips. "Well?"

Mrs. Underwood was confused. "We speak English, sir. Indeed we are — at least I am — English, as you must be."

"Beautiful day, isn't it?" The stranger nodded at the sea. "Nice and calm. Must be the early Devonian, eh? Have you been here long?"

"Long enough, sir."

"We are marooned," Jherek explained. "A malfunction of our time-craft. The paradoxes were too much for it, I suspect."

The stranger nodded gravely. "I've sometimes experienced similar difficulties, though happily without such drastic results. You're from the nineteenth century, I take it."

"Mrs. Underwood is. I hail from the End of Time."

"Aha!" The stranger smiled. "I have just come from there. I was fortunate enough to witness the complete disintegration of the universe — briefly, of course. I, too, am originally from the nineteenth century. This would be one of my regular stops, if I were journeying to the past. The peculiar thing is that I was under the impression I was going forward — beyond, as it were, the End of Time. My instruments indicate as much. Yet here I am." He scratched his sandy hair, adding, in mild disappointment, "I was hoping for some illumination."

"You are on your way, then, to the future?" Mrs. Underwood asked. "To the nineteenth century?"

"It seems that I must be. When did you leave?"

"1896," Mrs. Underwood told him.

"I am from 1894. I was not aware that anyone else had hit upon my discovery during that period…"

"There!" exclaimed Jherek. "Mr. Wells was right!"

"Our machine was from Mr. Carnelian's period," she said. "Originally, I was abducted to the End of Time, under circumstances which remain mysterious. The motives of my abductor continue to be obscure, moreover. I…" She paused apologetically. "This is of no interest to you, of course." She moistened her lips. "You would not, I suppose, have the means of lighting a fire, sir?"

The stranger patted the bulging pockets of his Norfolk jacket. "Somewhere. Some matches. I tend to carry as many necessities as possible about my person. In the event of being stranded … Here we are." He produced a large box of vestas. "I would give you the whole box, but…"

"A few will do. You say you are familiar with the early Devonian."

"As familiar as one can be."

"Your advice, then, would be welcome. The edibility of the molluscs, for instance?"